CONTROL YOUR DOG
By Graeme Hague
9 October 2013
The Black Dog is a three-piece, UK-based band that with various line-ups focused around founding member Ken Downie has been around since the early 1990’s and is close to legendary in the techno and dance music scene – even credited with inventing “intelligent dance music” or “IDM” (now, now, before you say anything…). The lads are enterprising, starting their own record label and such, but the latest Black Dog project is more ambitious. After launching a company called Machinewerks, they’ve embarked on designing, building and eventually distributing the ultimate USB/MIDI control surface for DJs and electronic musicians, since apparently nothing currently on the market was up to snuff. The result is the CS X51 controller and the next step is full production. For financing this phase, money is being sourced from crowd-funding through an organisation called Kickstarter and the target of £27,000 has just been reached. However, there’s still room on the Black Dog bandwagon and if you’re interested in a piece of the CS X51 action, or curious about the controller itself, the Machinewerks Kickstarter page is full of information.
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